The Italian company Sawaya Moroni in collaboration with designer/programmer John Maeda, using his algorithmic “Fireball” graphic. Photo above by renzo358 from the Abitare Il Tempo 2009 in Verona.

More from Vancouver Art in the Sixties. This electronic sound work is called Floating Mushroom, by Dennis Vance, September 30, 1969. Photo by Michael de Courcy. Nice piece and nice pea coat. From the site:

“Floating Mushroom” was a floating steel form containing sound-generating equipment that responded to movement on the shore. This intervention took place at Lost Lagoon in Vancouver. L-R: Ian Ridgeway, Gerry Gilbert, Galen Ridgeway, Heidi Ridgeway, Kita Ridgeway, Dallas Selman, Dennis Vance, Glenn Toppings.

Add a ladle every night
To every ladle, add a light

101 Nights is an art installation by Vancouver writer and broadcaster Bill Richardson, and it ended tonight on the winter solstice. Bill produced it inside the shopfront windows of his old Edwardian house in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood. I’ve walked past this every night for months now. Bill collected 101 steel ladles from thrift and other sources, and each night for 101 nights he hung a ladle from the ceiling and lit a candle in its bowl. Tonight, on the solstice, the ladles total 101 and the whole neighbourhood was invited in to light a candle and make a wish.

101 Nights was so beautiful that I predict the neighbourhood will want to see it again next year, but lighting all the candles nightly was such a phenomenal amount of work that no one will blame Bill if he never does it again. I suggested that he hire a proper lamplighter, with a dark hood and a long taper and candle snuff, to come and light the candles every night. Maybe the figure of the lamplighter comes to mind because there’s an almost Dickensian feeling about the evenings at this time of year, here at the 49th parallel when it’s dusk at 4:30 pm. But it’s also that there’s not a little of the Dickensian in our neighbourhood, so close to ground zero of poverty in Vancouver, and the ladles are somehow a strange reminder of the ever-present soup kitchens nearby.

A man with a dry sense of humour and great stationery. Via swissmiss and thanks to blprnt for finding it.

I spent hours as a kid making marble runs, using anything that was lying around my dad’s tool area. I’d usually start with a big chunk of solid wood (usually cedar, left over from deck-building) and make the marble wind around it in a spiral, down tracks made of elastic bands stretched between two pairs of nails, thin slats with grooves whittled out, leftover copper plumbing pipe etc. I was the artsy type l so I was trying for an aesthetic effect but that’s not necessary! My dad’s friends would play with the runs when they came over, so I know they’re not just for kids. On a whim I searched Flickr a few days ago and found many marble runs, none of which resembled mine at all, but all of which are amazing. This is only a tiny fraction of what I found. They’re not all DIY – there are some out there that span several floors and are permanently installed in museums, and there are many plastic commercial models – but they’re all interesting. Look at this ingenious one hipnerd made for his child. In memory of my childhood fixation, my sister recently bought me a beautiful, traditional woodblock marble run set, and naturalmom on Flickr has the same one! (Below.) Below that is a slightly less safe marble run made from glass tube, but it’s stunning. Click on the photos to go to their Flickr pages for more information. Thanks to all the photographers for designating these Creative Commons. If you’re searching, also try “marble roll” as a search term.

Paper cutout sculptures by Jen Stark. Thanks to Paul for pointing these out. It seems paradoxical that geometry can create a visceral response, but it does.